I'm 45 and I'd like you to know what dating was like up until no more than a decade ago or so, what changed, why, and why it hurts guys.

In the late 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s, online platforms for dating, which were at the time only websites like Okcupid, were more or less taboo, both guys and girls regarded having a profile there similarly to how today "femcel" and "incel" are perceived, people who had a profile kept it a secret, and felt ashamed, and this goes for both sexes, as this was considered admitting you are not attractive enough to find love in the real world, as if you have some kind of disability.

Tinder was only just invented and it was not at all a dating app but something completely different - for years (probably since the dawn of time), both sexes were seeing someone that they really want to have sex with and imagining "what if that someone has the very same thought about me!" but most people could never find out, and this was the underlying human drive tinder was created for - "we'll let two people in the same vicinity tell each other that they both had that thought". The actual technology was never able to actually fulfill this promise - that a guy sees a girl, thinks this, she sees him, thinks the same, they both identify each other on the app, both just swipe, and understand they both had the same thought and hook up - but, this was precisely the fantasy and drive tinder was offering, explicitly - this is not an interpretation, this was what tinder was all about. In practice for a few years it became a hookup app. Then ten years ago, something happened and millions have been pushed into the app and later to other apps for completely different reasons, millions of women who never wanted a hookup started expecting a relationship there, at first it was bizarre, then they took over and tinder became "a dating app" which it was never meant to be and is awful at, the entire mechanism is not for getting to know but for quickies. And the reason millions started to look for relationships of all places in what was meant as a "sexual-intentions mind-reading app", is as follows.

In the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s, guys and girls flirted all the time, as I'm guessing they have been doing for at least 100 years before that, ever since match-making got outdated and people were free to choose their love on their own. Websites were not the primary venue but flirting. Then ten years ago feminism gradually started to ban the language humans have been using for probably thousands of years to find love - flirting - first it was banned at work, then at college, then in pubs ("taking the night back"), finally in public places like a train ride or the street (I once came up to a woman on the street and just told her, "I think you are the most beautiful woman in town, sorry if it bothers you, just had to let you know", she just said thanks and went on her way, then from what I understand she started looking for me by walking that street over and over, until she ran into me again and invited me in, and we had a thing for a month or so - meaning flirting in public places was not forbidden, of course as long as it's not done in a rude way or to offend, but authentically in a nice way). And this feminist ban on direct flirting everywhere pushed an entire generation into apps, most of which were never meant for this and are awful at that.

This had rewritten the attitude toward a date, and this is important to understand because it is what causes both sexes their current problems in dating and the dehumanization guys feel in dating: When I was 20-30, online was considered creepy and flirting was normal, now flirting became "creepy" and online is to be considered "normal", but, and this is the crux of the matter - none of the two sexes can actually replace direct communication with a screen. Men are very sensitive to external looks, but women are different and mostly rely on "picking up a vibe" from a guy. Alas - vibes, don't transmit through pictures, and not even through text messages (unless you are some spectacular poet), but in countless unnoticeable gestures that can only be seen in real life. This means that girls "can't make up their minds whether they like the guy's profile", which is actually not a difficulty in deciding, but of girls not being able to absorb the information women look for about men - the vibe - and guys feel muted, that they can't transmit who they are and what they are.

As a result, girls now treat dates completely differently than how it used to be for me, which hurts the guys: when I was dating, the fact that a girl wants to meet with us meant that she likes us. From her perspective, not only from ours, agreeing to go out on a date was a statement, it meant that she likes us, there was a reason for dating us. But now, since feminism pushed everything into apps and apps don't allow girls to sense the primary thing they feel in men (the vibe), they are treating the date, as swiping. They are meeting only to sense the vibe, because feminism and apps don't let them feel it. So now, them agreeing for a date doesn't mean anymore that they at all want to be on this date and that they like you. This is extremely dehumanizing for the guys - their actual existence is treated as if they are pictures.

And guys, who are male and hence are sensitive to looks and extract a tremendous amount of information from pictures including about personality and are on the date not "to see if it's swipe left or right" but because they actually like the girl, are asking "why did you come if you didn't feel in advance that you like me - like I felt about you and made me want to date you?" And this really torments the guys, they feel that girls are having dates with them just for passing time. Girls on the other hand become angry that "guys feel that if they have a date the guy is entitled for some affection", and this hurts the guys more, because they are not aware that girls can't sense a guy in apps and that girls have resorted to "date swiping" (without the guys ever consenting to this, to prepare and make time and travel and choose a spot just to stand there to be swiped) - they still think, and justly so, that if she is dating you it means she likes you as we used to date up to 10 years ago, so for guys, it's not "expecting something in return" but "why did you even bring me here if you don't even like me?"

And they are right, a date is an intimate meeting, it's not a replacement for swiping, girls were forced to try and make dates "random swiping" because feminism banned for them the only means they have as women to see who they like - real-world flirting where they can sense vibes.

And because of the feminist oppression of the entire discussion, nothing is ever talked about, no one becomes aware of any of the problems I listed, that all stem from banning flirting, which women depend on for sensing guys. No one is allowed to explain, in a book or a column, to girls, that they sense vibes and not pictures and that this is what makes it so difficult for them to "know" in apps who they like, and nothing else.

Then another problem arises. What happens to the experience within the app, if it's primary function - "seeing who you like" - can't be fulfilled and this function is transferred to the actual dating? What then remains of the app experience itself? The answer is that apps became for girls a similar experience to online shopping. This is important to understand - the entire scene from a girl's perspective, became the same as when she buys shoes. Since the emotional element depends in girls on vibes that pictures can't transmit, swiping became devoid of that emotional element (whether sexual or romantic or both) that guys do have from imagery because of their sex-specific sensitivity to looks, and so the sensory and cognitive activity for a girl becomes similar to online shopping, so when she swipes she feels more or less as if she is shopping for guys, and this led to more dehumanization (girls are not aware that they do that). So while guys only date girls that they want to date (for love or sex, with their understanding of their league, doesn't matter), girls date mechanically, like trying on shoes without knowing if they even want them ("trying on" is a very common leisure activity of girls and women, which they transferred to dating from shopping, because of the cognitive similarity for them). So girls treat human beings as a commodity, a "trying on", without even guessing how inhumane this is, and that this "shoe" has feelings, expectations, humanity, while guys need to deal with this treatment without any possibility to express their feelings from this in a legitimate and acknowledged social discussion (as girls can do about their dating experience) - feminism mutes them.

Whenever you can, propose to girls and women this explanation, because if they won't demand of feminism to stop the ban on real-world flirting, and protest against the ban, both sexes will continue to be trapped in apps that cause all of the above, hurting guys and girls as well.